The ReadFree tool for the identification of poor readers: a validation study based on a machine learning approach in monolingual and minority-language children.

In this study, we validated the "ReadFree tool", a computerised battery of 12 visual and auditory tasks developed to identify poor readers also in minority-language children (MLC). We tested the task-specific discriminant power on 142 Italian-monolingual participants (8-13 years old) divided into monolingual poor readers (N = 37) and good readers (N = 105) according to standardised Italian reading tests. The performances at the discriminant tasks of the "ReadFree tool" were entered into a classification and regression tree (CART) model to identify monolingual poor and good readers.

The biased hand. Mouse-tracking metrics to examine the conflict processing in a race-implicit association test.

In this study, we adapted a race-Implicit Association Test (race-IAT) to mouse-tracking (MT) technique to identify the more representative target observed MT-metrics and explore the temporal unfolding of the cognitive conflict emerging during the categorisation task. Participants of Western European descent performed a standard keyboard-response race-IAT (RT-race-IAT) and an MT-race-IAT with the same structure. From a behavioural point of view, our sample showed a typical Congruency Effect, thus a pro-White implicit bias, in the RT-race-IAT.

Rapid Automatized Naming as a Universal Marker of Developmental Dyslexia in Italian Monolingual and Minority-Language Children.

Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) is considered a universal marker of developmental dyslexia (DD) and could also be helpful to identify a reading deficit in minority-language children (MLC), in which it may be hard to disentangle whether the reading difficulties are due to a learning disorder or a lower proficiency in the language of instruction. We tested reading and rapid naming skills in monolingual Good Readers (mGR), monolingual Poor Readers (mPR), and MLC, by using our new version of RAN, the RAN-Shapes, in 127 primary school students (from 3rd to 5th grade). In line with previous research, MLC showed, on average, lower reading performances as compared to mGR.

Taking apart what brings us together: The role of action prediction, perspective-taking, and theory of mind in joint action.

The ability to act together with others to achieve common goals is crucial in life, yet there is no full consensus on the underlying cognitive skills. While influential theoretical accounts suggest that interaction requires sophisticated insights into others' minds, alternative views propose that high-level social skills might not be necessary because interactions are grounded on sensorimotor predictive mechanisms. At present, empirical evidence is insufficient to decide between the two.

Comparison of Oxford Cognitive Screen and Montreal Cognitive Assessment feasibility in the stroke unit setting. A pilot study.

Background: Cognitive status evaluation is not routine in the acute stroke setting and there is no consensus on which neuropsychological tool is more feasible and informative. The aim of this pilot study was to compare the feasibility and acceptability of two brief cognitive tests, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and the Oxford Cognitive Screen (OCS), in acute stroke, with a focus on patients' experience, administration time, and the cognitive data obtained.

Methods: Patients with a diagnosis of ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke or of transient ischemic attack admitted to two stroke units were included.

Orthographic depth and developmental dyslexia: a meta-analytic study.

Cross-cultural studies have suggested that reading deficits in developmental dyslexia (DD) can be moderated by orthographic depth. To further explore this issue and assess the moderating role of orthographic depth in the developmental cognitive trajectories of dyslexic and typical readers, we systematically reviewed 113 studies on DD that were published from 2013 to 2018 and selected 79 in which participants received an official DD diagnosis. Each study was classified according to orthographic depth (deep vs.

Artificial intelligence and neuropsychological measures: The case of Alzheimer's disease.

One of the current challenges in the field of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is to identify patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) that will convert to AD. Artificial intelligence, in particular machine learning (ML), has established as one of more powerful approach to extract reliable predictors and to automatically classify different AD phenotypes. It is time to accelerate the translation of this knowledge in clinical practice, mainly by using low-cost features originating from the neuropsychological assessment.

Neural Correlates of Body Integrity Dysphoria.

There are few things as irrefutable as the evidence that our limbs belong to us. However, persons with body integrity dysphoria (BID) [1] deny the ownership of one of their fully functional limbs and seek its amputation [2]. We tapped into the brain mechanisms of BID, examining sixteen men desiring the removal of the left healthy leg.

Music Education at School: Too Little and Too Late? Evidence From a Longitudinal Study on Music Training in Preadolescents.

It is widely believed that intensive music training can boost cognitive and visuo-motor skills. However, this evidence is primarily based on retrospective studies; this makes it difficult to determine whether a cognitive advantage is caused by the intensive music training, or it is instead a factor influencing the choice of starting a music curriculum. To address these issues in a highly ecological setting, we tested longitudinally 128 students of a Middle School in Milan, at the beginning of the first class and, 1 year later, at the beginning of the second class.

Clustering the Brain With "CluB": A New Toolbox for Quantitative Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Data.

In this paper we describe and validate a new coordinate-based method for meta-analysis of neuroimaging data based on an optimized hierarchical clustering algorithm: CluB (Clustering the Brain). The CluB toolbox permits both to extract a set of spatially coherent clusters of activations from a database of stereotactic coordinates, and to explore each single cluster of activation for its composition according to the cognitive dimensions of interest. This last step, called "cluster composition analysis," permits to explore neurocognitive effects by adopting a factorial-design logic and by testing the working hypotheses using either asymptotic tests, or exact tests either in a classic inference, or in a Bayesian-like context.

Neuroimaging Studies on Disorders of Consciousness: A Meta-Analytic Evaluation.

Neuroimaging tools could open a window on residual neurofunctional activity in the absence of detectable behavioural responses in patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC). Nevertheless, the literature on this topic is characterised by a large heterogeneity of paradigms and methodological approaches that can undermine the reproducibility of the results. To explicitly test whether task-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be used to systematically detect neurofunctional differences between different classes of DOC, and whether these differences are related with a specific category of cognitive tasks (either active or passive), we meta-analyzed 22 neuroimaging studies published between 2005 and 2017 using the Activation Likelihood Estimate method.

As Time Goes by: A rTMS Study on Age-Related Changes in Sentence Comprehension.

It is well established that off-line sentence judgment tasks (oSJTs) typically rely on phonological working memory (WM), beyond specific linguistic processing. Nevertheless, empirical findings suggest that a juvenile level of performance in an oSJT could be associated with the recruitment of age-specific additional supportive neural network in healthy aging. In particular, in one of our previous study, healthy elderlies showed the additional activation of associative visual cortices when compared with young controls.

"The vestibular system, body temperature and sense of body ownership: a potential link? Insights from a single case study".

The vestibular system plays a pivotal role in behavioural and physiological aspects of body representation. If on the one hand, the stimulation of the vestibular system in healthy subjects provokes body representation distortions, accompanied by a decrease of body temperature, on the other hand, in brain-damaged patients it transiently restores body representation disorders. So far, the physiological counterpart of such behavioural amelioration on patients has never been explored.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Integrative Group Treatment Protocol (EMDR-IGTP) Applied to Caregivers of Patients With Dementia.

Caregivers of patients with dementia experience high levels of stress and burden, with effects comparable to those of a traumatic event. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) appear to be effective in recovering post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We aimed at investigating the effectiveness of the Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Integrative Group Treatment Protocol (EMDR-IGTP) on the "caregiver syndrome".

What is difficult for you can be easy for me. Effects of increasing individual task demand on prefrontal lateralization: A tDCS study.

Neuroimaging studies suggest that the increment of the cognitive load associated with a specific task may induce the recruitment of a more bilateral brain network. In most studies, however, task demand has been manipulated in a static and pre-specified way, regardless of individual cognitive resources. Here we implemented a new paradigm based on a pre-experimental assessment to set up subject-specific levels of task demand and applied tDCS (transcranial direct current stimulation) to assess each hemisphere involvement in task performance.

How many deficits in the same dyslexic brains? A behavioural and fMRI assessment of comorbidity in adult dyslexics.

Dyslexia can have different manifestations: this has motivated different theories on its nature, on its underlying brain bases and enduring controversies on how to best treat it. The relative weight of the different manifestations has never been evaluated using both behavioural and fMRI measures, a challenge taken here to assess the major systems called into play in dyslexia by different theories. We found that adult well-compensated dyslexics were systematically impaired only in reading and in visuo-phonological tasks, while deficits for other systems (e.

A neuroanatomical account of mental time travelling in schizophrenia: A meta-analysis of functional and structural neuroimaging data.

Mental time travel (MTT) abilities could be particularly compromised in schizophrenic patients due to a deficit of the cognitive processes at the basis of remembering the past and imaging the future: constructive processes, theory of mind and self-awareness. Accordingly, we assumed that the neural circuits typically associated with MTT in healthy people might be partially compromised in chronic schizophrenic patients. To quantitatively and anatomically test our hypothesis, we run two meta-analyses using the Activation Likelihood Estimate method: (i) a neurofunctional meta-analysis on MTT in healthy subjects, (ii) a morphometrical meta-analysis on chronic schizophrenia.

Framing effects reveal discrete lexical-semantic and sublexical procedures in reading: an fMRI study.

According to the dual-route model, a printed string of letters can be processed by either a grapheme-to-phoneme conversion (GPC) route or a lexical-semantic route. Although meta-analyses of the imaging literature support the existence of distinct but interacting reading procedures, individual neuroimaging studies that explored neural correlates of reading yielded inconclusive results. We used a list-manipulation paradigm to provide a fresh empirical look at this issue and to isolate specific areas that underlie the two reading procedures.

Unrealistic representations of "the self": A cognitive neuroscience assessment of anosognosia for memory deficit.

Three cognitive components may play a crucial role in both memory awareness and in anosognosia for memory deficit (AMD): (1) a personal data base (PDB), i.e., a memory store that contains "semantic" representations about the self, (2) monitoring processes (MPs) and (3) an explicit evaluation system (EES), or comparator, that assesses and binds the representations stored in the PDB with information obtained from the environment.

Reading the dyslexic brain: multiple dysfunctional routes revealed by a new meta-analysis of PET and fMRI activation studies.

Developmental dyslexia has been the focus of much functional anatomical research. The main trust of this work is that typical developmental dyslexics have a dysfunction of the phonological and orthography to phonology conversion systems, in which the left occipito-temporal cortex has a crucial role. It remains to be seen whether there is a systematic co-occurrence of dysfunctional patterns of different functional systems perhaps converging on the same brain regions associated with the reading deficit.

Like the back of the (right) hand? A new fMRI look on the hand laterality task.

There is a common saying for expressing familiarity with something. It refers to our hands, and strangely enough, in English, one says to know something like the back of the hand, whereas in other cultures, for example, Italy, Spain and France, the same expression is with the palm. Previous behavioural data have suggested that our ability to visually discriminate a right from a left hand is influenced by perspective.

Clustering the lexicon in the brain: a meta-analysis of the neurofunctional evidence on noun and verb processing.

Although it is widely accepted that nouns and verbs are functionally independent linguistic entities, it is less clear whether their processing recruits different brain areas. This issue is particularly relevant for those theories of lexical semantics (and, more in general, of cognition) that suggest the embodiment of abstract concepts, i.e.

Reassessing the HAROLD model: is the hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults a special case of compensatory-related utilisation of neural circuits?

The HAROLD (hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults) model, proposed by Cabeza in 2002, suggests that age-related neurofunctional changes are characterised by a significant reduction in the functional hemispheric lateralisation in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The supporting evidence, however, has been derived from qualitative explorations of the data rather than from explicit statistical assessments of functional lateralisation. In contrast, the CRUNCH (compensation-related utilisation of neural circuits hypothesis) model posits that elderly subjects recruit additional brain regions that do not necessarily belong to the contralateral hemisphere as much as they rely on additional strategies to solve cognitive problems.